Cape Town - Police continue to investigate the murders of two children in separate small, sleepy towns, although a suspect has been identified in both the crimes.
The bodies were found within two weeks of each other.
In the latest case, the body of 11-year-old Zama Mani was discovered a week ago in dense bushes in Knysna with a shoe lace around his neck.
About two weeks earlier, the body of five-year-old Kayde Williams, who was raped, was found buried under twigs on a field near her home in the Overberg town of Bredasdorp.
Southern Cape police spokesman Captain Malcolm Pojie said 51-year-old Mxolisi Kopi had been arrested in connection with Zama’s abduction and murder.
Kopi is expected back in the Knysna Magistrate’s Court in April.
In Kayde’s case a suspect, Nicolaas Jacobus van Edon, 45, was found hanged in a local cemetery four days after the body was discovered.
Police spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel André Traut said Kayde’s murder was still under investigation.
“The contents of our case docket cannot be disclosed,” he said.
Zama went missing last Friday.
Pojie said the boy, from Khayalethu in Knysna, had left home as usual to attend Fraaisig Primary School. “Later it was established that he never attended classes that day,” he said.
He was reported missing at 9pm that day.
Pojie said a team, including police, emergency medical services and volunteers, searched for him over two days.
He said they had received information that Zama had been seen with Kopi that Friday morning.
“He was interrogated and revealed the whereabouts of the missing boy. He (the suspect) led police to a footpath in dense bushes… where he revealed the body of the boy, who was still fully clothed. Police found the boy with a shoe lace around his neck.”
The motive for Zama’s murder was not yet known. In Kayde’s case, the motive for her death has also not been revealed.
She was last seen on February 1 walking from her mother’s home to her grandmother’s home close by.
That was the last day Van Edon was seen in the area before his body was discovered.
Kayde’s body was found the day after she went missing. Her body was discovered two years to the day Anene Booysen, 17, was murdered in the town.
Both girls are buried in the same cemetery, a short distance from where Van Edon apparently hanged himself.
Weekend Argus